Kathryn started competing whenever she was 21 and described the competition as an uphill battle in her own mind. She viewed herself as the underdog from Indiana. She was born about 20 minutes from Chicago, and she stated how there wasn’t a huge fashion community nor did she know anyone who was in the industry.

Kathryn purchased top designer products and believed that she could create her own designs while in school. Back then, she hadn’t realized there was a difference between being a shopper and a designer. She was proved of how wrong she was when she was in design school and was told by her teachers to drop out because she wasn’t fit to be a designer.